


no blinding light

by sleepinnude



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, MCD is Cas so proceed with care!, no happy ending sorry :/
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24207175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepinnude/pseuds/sleepinnude
Summary: There’s a cruel twist to Chuck’s grin as he looks up from the husk of Castiel to Dean. “I created so many worlds,” he says, his tone one of wonder, “so many universes. And in all of them – every one of them, Dean – he loved you.”
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 13
Kudos: 80





	no blinding light

**Author's Note:**

> saw [this post](https://top13zepptraxx.tumblr.com/post/618169931053383680/i-remember-reading-somewhere-that-when-cas-is) and wrote the angst.
> 
> (i swear i'm working on that last chapter for "most of us strangers" i swear)
> 
> title from death cab's 'i will follow you into the dark'

Faintly, Dean realizes that the wordless shout of rage, of despair, came from him. Some part of him is still lunging forward, stopped only by Sam holding him. He fights, blindly, only registering Cas, Cas’s body, Cas falling to his knees and then collapsing back and then the searing flash of grace released. Cas was so diminished that it only lasts a second.

Between one blink and the next, Cas is dead on the ground, his tarnished wings spreading ash across tallgrass and dandelions. 

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before,” Chuck says, as if he’s just solved an insect infestation. “It was always Castiel, wasn’t it? What did Naomi call him -- the famous spanner in the works?” Chuck laughs, almost fondly. Crouching, he leans close to Cas’s face.

“Get away from him!” Dean yells and he’s staggering forward. Sam let his guard down, so Dean is up in God’s face in a second.

He can remember a roadside fast-food shack. A last ditch prayer with desolation crowding in on his chest. He can remember, forever, the silence in answer.

There’s a cruel twist to Chuck’s grin as he looks up from the husk of Castiel to Dean. “I created so many worlds,” he says, his tone one of wonder, “so many universes. And in all of them -- every one of them, Dean -- he loved you.”

There’s something rising up in Dean and it might be bile, it might be tears. It might be that hollow, choking feeling that has followed every defeat they’ve found their way into, every unforced error, every blockade that’s risen from the snowmelt of every almost-success. All that comes out, though, is a strangled out cry.

He trades positions with God. Chuck rises to his feet as Dean drops to knees. He reaches out, strokes at the sweaty fringe that falls over Cas’s forehead.

“Did you know that? That he loved you?”

He thought it, maybe. Had considered it, some dark nights. He thought it as he watched Cas walk back into a Gas ‘N’ Sip in Idaho and he thought it as he watched the angel back from the dead next to a payphone and he thought it as Cas showed him the truth of Purgatory and he thought it as he said, lost, “For what it’s worth, I would give anything not to have you do this.” He thought it and rejected it and thought it and rationalized why it couldn’t be.

“Some part of you must have,” Chuck is saying but he’s mostly white noise to Dean. Everything else is white noise, except Cas. “He wasn’t exactly subtle about it, was he?”

There was one time. The night before he let Cas go in Idaho. There were looks and thick swallows and there was Cas’s hand at his shoulder and Dean’s hands at Cas’s hips, suddenly, and Cas’s back against a motel wall. And then…there was nothing. 

Because Dean shuddered through an inhale and ducked his head and Cas said his name and Dean stuttered something about a shower and then…that was it.

Maybe Dean’s whole life has just been a series of missed chances, one after another, with the biggest, most important one laid out before him. Some part of him, some deep twist at the base of his stomach, knows that this isn’t like any of the times before. Isn’t even like the time with Lucifer at the lake. Because Cas is really gone (like that time) but something sure and certain and crippling inside Dean is whispering that he’s not coming back. You don’t come back when God personally kills you.

“Hey!”

Similarly, when God wants your attention, you’re a little powerless.

“What?” Dean barks. Because Chuck might be God but he still just killed Cas.

“You’re not listening,” Chuck says, sounding like a petulant second-grader.

Dean is halfway to spitting out a “fuck you” when Chuck reaches out. And Dean thinks, _This is it_ and _This is how I die_ and, optimistically, _Coming, Cas._

But it doesn’t come, Death. Chuck puts his fingers to Dean’s forehead and it hits him like lightning. Knowledge… It takes him a minute to realize what exactly he’s seeing: those other universes. All the ways Cas has loved him.

There’s the horrible world taken over by Croatoans. There’s a pink-cheeked, dazed Cas sprawled over a dilapidated armchair in a cabin with a beaded curtain. His hair is dirty and a mess and when that terrible version of Dean from 2014 stalks forward, he fists his hand in the hair. Cas grins with all his teeth and tips his chin to meet Dean’s eyes. Dean says something, close and soft and heated. Cas’s face changes, warms, melts, and his eyes go to half-mast. Dean leans forward into him.

There’s a world shot through with grayscale and Cas has a soldier’s set to his shoulders and hair that’s so neat it almost looks messy again. He’s standing in some barren wasteland and his eyes are to the sky. He’s staring and staring and staring and Dean can remember his Cas staring at a motel’s ceiling, cursing his deadbeat dad.

There’s a park and there are children running happily. There’s sun, so much sun, and there’s Jack and Sam laughing as they chase some toddler and there’s Cas looking at Dean, who’s watching the mismatched game of tag. And there’s Dean, looking back and finding Cas’s eyes and smiling. Dean reaches back and his hand is open and waiting, for Cas. All for Cas.

There’s a barn, and there’s a prophet’s house, and there’s a ring of holy fire, and there’s a reservoir, and there’s Purgatory, and there’s a crypt, and there’s the bunker, and there’s a Mark on his arm, and there are arms around him from behind, and there’s Lucifer’s sick grin, and there’re wings burned into a lake shore, and there’s a call coming through as Steppenwolf plays, and there’s a Jack’s body cradled in a graveyard, and there’s Cas’s dejected shoulders, and Cas’s angry spine, and there’s a blossom from Purgatory and there’s Cas, there’s Cas, there’s Cas.

There’s, finally, a bed.

It’s in a room of mostly mid-tone wood and there’s sunlight coming in from a window, casting lines across the bed.

There’s Cas, sprawled on his stomach with his hair even more of a wreck than usual and he’s not wearing a shirt and his face is tipped so the soft smile there is obvious. And Dean is underneath him. It’s not some other Dean that he’s watching like out-of-body, no, this is Dean. He can feel the weight of him, the heat. He can feel the slight shift as Cas breathes in and out, he can feel the smooth skin between Cas’s shoulder blades, where his hand is running up and down.

Dean is crying and he slides his fingers into Cas’s hair. He snuffles at the touch and stirs and his smile goes even wider. Dean cries harder, full sobs that wrack through his chest but Castiel doesn’t seem to notice.

He opens his eyes and smiles at Dean. Reaching, he laces their fingers together and cocks his head. “Hello, Dean,” he says, like he’s said a hundred, a thousand, times before and Dean can’t breathe. A cloud moves and the sun is brighter. Dean can feel it on his bare skin, he can see the shadows it makes over Cas’s cheeks. “I love you,” Cas says quietly. Dean’s never seen him so easy, so calm, so...at peace.

The bed falls out from under him and Dean is landing on hands and knees and there’s just bluegrass and ash under his fingers. “No, no, no,” he’s chanting. He can feel his stomach turning and he can’t breathe.

“Maybe now you’ll learn to play by my rules,” Chuck says, and then he’s gone.

A moment later, or maybe it’s an hour, or maybe it’s a second, Sam is at his side and holding onto his shoulders. “Dean, c’mon,” he’s saying. His words are waterlogged. “Please, Dean…”

It must have been more than just seconds, though, because when Dean comes back to his sight, Jack is on the ground too, his head on Cas’s chest. All curled up on the corpse of his father.

Dean shakes his head. He stands, dirt sifting through his hands as he goes. 

The imprint of Cas’s wings burnt into the ground bare a handprint, high on the left, where Dean levels himself up off the ground.

“Dean?” he hears behind him as he turns, sees the Impala shining in the setting sun.

“C’mon, Sam,” he says. He shrugs one arm up, wiping at the raw-red of his eyes. He worries his bottom lip with his tongue and then, more to himself than anyone else, murmurs, “We got work to do.”

**Author's Note:**

> [rebloggable here](https://sweatercas.tumblr.com/post/618228519524270080/i-saw-this-post-from-top13zepptraxx-and-uh-i)!


End file.
